US Rep Dismisses Nigerian Minister’s Casualty Figure as Unbelievable

A member of the United States Congress, Riley Moore, has publicly dismissed the claim made by Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, that only 177 Christians were killed in the country over the last five years. The US Representative, speaking at a congressional hearing in Washington D.C., suggested the figure was implausible and unhelpful in addressing the country’s security crisis.

Minister Tuggar had presented the controversial figure during a heated appearance on the Piers Morgan Show on Tuesday, where he sought to challenge widespread allegations of a “Christian genocide” and provide the Nigerian government’s context on the complex security situation. During that interview, Morgan presented significantly higher statistics from the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), which alleged that over 50,000 Christians have been killed and 18,000 churches destroyed in Nigeria since 2009.

Tuggar had firmly dismissed the Intersociety figures as inaccurate, arguing that the Nigerian government does not tally casualty figures by religious faith but views all victims primarily as Nigerian citizens. When pressed for an alternative official figure, he provided the number of 177 Christian deaths over five years, based on what he termed verifiable government records.

However, Congressman Moore, reacting to the minister’s claim during a U.S. Congress hearing on Thursday, expressed deep puzzlement and concern over the massive disparity in the numbers. He noted that the Minister’s figure echoed similar, disputed statistics presented by the Nigerian delegation currently visiting Washington to address the security concerns.

Moore relayed his frustration with the official narrative: “I recently saw the foreign minister was in some interview, I think it was Piers Morgan, and it was the same thing when they [the delegation] came here and some of us spoke to them, just disputing these numbers.”

He then delivered his sharpest critique directly targeting the believability of the official figure: “I think the foreign minister said in the last five years there’s only 177 Christians have been killed. I don’t think there’s anybody believes that, and I don’t think that it’s necessarily constructive on their part to try to downplay what’s happening here.”

Congressman Moore’s remarks underscore the persistent disconnect between the official narrative put forth by the Nigerian government and the grim, higher casualty figures widely accepted by human rights organizations and now being debated in the U.S. legislative body. His statement signals that the international community remains skeptical of the government’s official statistics and demands a more transparent and comprehensive accounting of the violence impacting religious communities in Nigeria.